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TIUNITY COLLEGE PUBLICATIONS: 



ZSTo. 1. 



LB^^oq^ fponi oui^ floi'tsS Carolina l^ecoi'd^: 



AN ADDRESS 



READ BEFORE THE 



Faculty and Students of Trinity College, 



November 27, 1888, 



BY 



Hon. WILLIAM L. SAUNDERS, 

Secretary of State, North Carolina. ■ 



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TRINITY college; 


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North Carolina, U. S. A. 












1889. 














Class, 
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Le^^on^ km onri tloflij Cafoliqa pi^torj. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of Trinity College: 

Some six months and more ago when I received President Crowell's 
kind invitation to deliver the address on this occasion I hesitated what 
to say in reply. I knew how uncertain my health was ; I knew, too, 
that we were on the eve of one of our great American quadrennial politi- 
cal struggles, in which all matters merely historical would be sent well 
to the rear, and I feared it would be an injustice to Trinity as well as to 
myself to accept. On the other hand, the invitation gratified me. It 
gratified me, for one thing, because the subject assigned to me for dis- 
cussion was North Carolina; and then, too, for purely personal reasons, 
I was specially gratified that the invitation came from Trinity. 

From my present helpless condition one would scarcely think so, but 
the fact is that during the late war I had the honor to command a regi- 
ment in Lee's arm}-, and one of my companies. Company G, was com- 
posed at its organization almost entirely of Trinity men, boys I might 
almost say, very many of them were; and the remembrance of that 
company has always made a warm spot in my heart for Trinity. And 
well does its memory deserve to be cherished, for your college register 
as well as its own roster bears mournful attest how faithful it was, even 
unto death. Therefore, when Trinity called, it was not in me to refuse, to 
make the effort, at least, to come. And then too a lesson I learned from 
old Company G, was that every North Carolinian must go promptly and 
cheerfully to the front whenever called upon for service in behalf of 
North Carolina, and so, Mr. President and gentlemen, I am here to-day. 

With this much by way of preface I proceed to my subject. 

Ninety-nine years ago. North Carolina, through her delegates in con- 
vention assembled in tiie town of Fayetteville, ratified the Federal Con- 
stitution, and thereupon liecame the twelfth State of the new Government. 
That event we celebrate to-day. Taking it, then, as a starting point and 
going back to the beginning of the Revolution that led up to it, two things 
are ajiparent from our records : 

1. That North Carolina after freeing herself from the British Govern- 
ment was unwilling to bind herself to any other government before 
considering well its provisions and until proper limitations were put 
upon its powers for evil, and that in this matter she would trust nothing 
to chance or the future, and that she viewed with a specially jealous eye 
the powers demanded for the Federal Government. 

2. That North Carolina was ready for the Revolution when it came ; 
that there was never a roll-call to which she did not respond promptly, 
" Present and ready for Duty !''; that though determined she was delib- 
erate and self-contained ; that when it was necessary to take the lead she 



f^ir^ 



went to the fore-front promptly and unhesitatingly ; that when there was 
no such need she contented herself with a position in the main line ; in 
a word, that she was ready to do whatever the exigency of the occasion 
demanded, always ready to do the right thing at the right time to lurther 
the great cause. 

1. Her reluctance to bind herself to any other Government. 

In August, 1775, North Carolina refused to ratify the plan of Confed- 
eration proposed by the Continental Congress and instructed her delegates 
there not to assent to any other plan until approved by the Provincial 
Congress and in April, 1776, when she authorised her delegates there to 
vote for " independency and foreign alliances " she exjtressly reserved to 
herself the sole and exclusive right to make her own constitution and 
laws. 

Nor was the ratification of the Federal Constitution reached without 
difficulty. Only a year before it was accomplished, the people, in conven- 
tion assembled at Hillsboro, had with equal solemnity and much more 
deliberation, and by a vote almost equally decisive, refused to ratify it. It 
must not be supposed, however, that this proceeded from fickleness or 
vacillation. Far from it, for no men knew better than the men of that day 
in N. Carolina what they wanted, and none had more the courage of their 
convictions than they. Nor was the action at Hillsboro induced by any 
disinclination to enter into a union with the other States, but to secure 
beyond all doubt certain amendments that were deemed by North Caro- 
lina and other States to be essential to the proposed Constitution and 
which, substantially, were afterwards made a part of the Constitution by 
the first ten amendments. The programme, in brief, was, that enough 
States should ratify the Constitution to secure the new Government and 
enough hold aloof to secure the desired amendments. Accordingly the 
eight States that first held their conventions having ratified the Consti- 
tution unconditionally, the brunt of the fight to secure the amendments 
fell upon tliree States, to-wit: New York, Virginia and Nortln Carolina, 
that had purposely delayed taking action. Virginia being the first State 
in point of population, North Carolina the third and New York the fourth, 
there was scarcely any doubt that any terms they might demand would 
be conceded in order to secure them as members of the new Government. 
But there was very strong opposition to this mode of proceeding and the 
fight waxed hot between the advocates of immediate ratification and 
those who thought the incorporation of the desired amendments into the 
Constitution ought to precede ratification, and in the end the advocates of 
immediate ratification, with Washington at their head, carried the day. 
Mr. Jefferson at first favored the plan, but, becoming satisfied the desired 
amendments would be speedily made, changed his views. The Virginia 
Convention met on 2d June and ratified the Constitution as it stood, 
after a long fight and by a very small majority. In New York, also, 
where the Convention met on 17th June, the struggle was a desperate 
one, and the Constitution was ratified by a very meagre majority. North 
Carolina, however, whose Convention met on 21st July, stood up to her 
integrity and exhibited the courage of her convictions, and by a vote of 
184 to 84 refused to ratify the Constitution before it was amended. 

In the course of a year, most of the desired amendments having been 
formally proposed to the States by the Congress and their adojjtion being 



assured, the Constitution which had been rejected in Hillsboro in 
August, 1788, was, as has been said, formally ratified in Fayetteville in 
November, 1789. 



Ami just here, perhaps, my friends, the question comes up in your 
rrfids as it did in mine. How came it that Nortli CaroHna was so reluc- 
tant to bind herself to any new government? XThe answer to this ques- 
tion is to be found in her historical records, alid there only, for, as Mr. 
Brancroft so well says, " The present is alwaj's the lineal descendant of 
the past. A new form of j)olitical life never appears but as a growth out 
of its antecedents, just as in nature there is no animal life without a 
seed or spore. In civil afiairs as much as in husbandry seed-time goes 
before harvest, and the harvest may be seen in the seed, the seed in the 
harvest." Had our great historian had North Carolina in his eye, his 
words could not have been more appropriate. Indeed, they are so apt a 
description of North Carolina that it seems scarcely possible they were 
nat used with special reference to her. 

(For a very brief summary, therefore, of the salient points in her his- 
tory, her "antecedents," I trust you will pardon me in this connection. 
These antecedents show a continuous struggle on the part of the people 
of North Carolina with the Indians in their front on the one hand and 
with Great Britain in the rear, so to speak, on the other. It took them 
near a hundred and twenty-five years to drive the Indians to the Ten- 
nessee line and more than that time to get rid of the British. These 
struggles were the schools in which the people got their education — 
schools of adversity in some senses, perhaps, but uncommonly good ones 
for all that. In these schools two things were well taught. In the 
Indian school. North Carolinians learned the capacity of man for self- 
government; and in the British, they learned the value of a written con- 
stitution as a protection and defence against arbitrary government. 
From the latter lesson scrupulous, jealous scrutiny of the text of a new 
constitution before i)ecoming bound l)y it, followed as a necessary 
corollary. 

Frontier life, as we understand the term in America, indicates a phase 
of human existence ]>eeuliar to this Western world, and we may almost 
say peculiar to it, in its Anglo-.Saxon development. Beginning on the 
shore of the Atlantic, the frontier moved westward until the red man 
was driven to the Pacific Coast. A few words describe the fact, but it 
took near three centuries to accom])lish it, for the Indian was no mean 
foe. Separated from the home country by an expanse of water of some 
8,000 miles, the colonists soon learned that upon themselves and not 
upon England must they depend; in a word, learned their capacity for 
self-government and became accustomed to its exercise.^ To men thus 
accustomed to depend upon themselves alone in every emergency, the 
doctrine of the divine right of kings could not long be received' with 
much respect. To such men, too, the simplest form of government only 
was tolerable, for, in the nature of things, frontiersmen feel every gov- 
ernment more in its burdens than its benefits. It was simply impos- 
sible for any Government to make the frontiers in America [jlaces of safe 
residence for its citizens, and hence the necessity for self-reliance for pro- 
tection. The result was that, taking lessons from the Indians, the fron- 
tiersmen soon came to be no respecters of persons, and learned that not 



even the divinity that hedges in a king could stop a well-directed bullet 
In a word, frontier life in America was a school for republicanism. 

/^In North Carolina, for nearly three-quarters of the first century of its 
settlement the Government was the veriest farce imaginable. During 
that time not merely all political authority but all private property in 
the soil as well, was vested in the Lords Proprietors, as they were called ; 
yet it was said that one of them if here " would be regarded no more 
than a ballad singer would be." Under their rule " the people of North 
Carolina were confessedly the freest of the free." Generally speaking, 
they were sarcastically said to recognize no authority not derived from 
themselves and to have deposed their Governors until they actually 
thought they had a right so to do. Rebellions, too, so-called, were the 
order of the day. 

To this state of things the utter indifference of the Proprietors to that 
portion of their great province contributed no little. The settlement on 
the Ashly and Cooper rivers that grew into ''South Carolina" was from 
the beginning the place upon which all their hopes were centred. For 
the settlement on the Albemarle, or North Carolina, as it was called after 
the second charter, in contra-distinction to " Carolina," they cared 
nothing. 

It must not be supposed, however, that the freedom enjoyed in North 
Carolina was simple license arising from a weak and an indifferent Gov- 
ernment, for the people here stoutly maintained that their liberties came 
to them by operation of the plainest of plain laws, from the royal char- 
ter under which the colony had its rise and got its growth. To them 
Magna Charta was not the charter granted by King John to the English 
Barons at Runnymede, but the one granted by King Charles the Second 
to the Lords Proprietors of the Province of Carolina. Their liberties, 
franchises and privileges belonged to them, they said, not because they 
were Englishmen — indeed, for that matter they were not all Englishmen 
— but because they were inhabitants of Carolina, all of whom were 
guaranteed the liberties, franchises and privileges oi^ English subjects by 
the charter in question ; that those rights peculiar to them as Carolin- 
ians were so fully vested in them by the charter of Charles, so absolutely 
their own, that by no process of law could they be abrogated or abridged 
without their consent, and hence that the transfer of the Province from 
the Lords Proprietors in 1728 worked no change whatever in their politi- 
cal status, that the King could no more govern by prerogative after 1728 
than the Lords Proprietors could have done so prior to that time, and, 
in a word, that in Carolina, upon subject and sovereign alike, " thus 
SAiTH THE LAW " was a suprcmc limitation. 

Unhappily, however, for the Province the views of its inhabitants were 
not those of the British King, and, what was perhaps of more practical 
importance, were not those of British business men. The British theory 
was that the colonies were permitted for the benefit of the Crown and the 
mother country, and that they had neither rights nor interests that the 
Crown or the mother country must regard. In the attempt to put this 
theory into execution are to be found the seeds that fruited in the Amer- 
ican Revolution of 1776. 

Another document, reverenced by the people of Albemarle, next to the 
charter of Charles, and of less importance only in that it was of narrower 
scope, was the one they called their Great Deed of Grant. This noted 



paper-writing, whicli was brought forward in the revisal of our laws as 
late as 1836, was a deed made by the Lords Proprietors, on the 1st May, 
KJbS, in response to a petition from the General Assembly held in the 
latter part of 1664 or the first of 1665, the first session of such a body 
ever held in North Carolina. By it the lands in Albemarle, as the colony 
was first called, were directed to be granted upon like terms and condi- 
tions as those in Virginia, which were mueli more advantageous than 
those that had hitherto obtained in North Carolina. The deed was re- 
corded in every register's office in Albemarle and the original preserved 
with the most scrupulous and reverential care. The book in which it 
was recorded in the county of Percjuimans is still preserved in the Reg- 
ister's office there. In 1731, by formal order of the Assembly, the original 
parchment was solemnly produced before that body and ordered into the 
keeping of the Speaker of the Assembly, its text being directed mean- 
while to be spread ui)on the minutes. The pains taken to preserve this 
important document in Albemarle seem to have been very necessary, for 
Governor Burrington declares in one of his letters that he could not, after 
diligent searcli, find any record of it in England. There was such a 
record, iiowcver, as may be seen any day now by reference to page 20, 
Colonial Entry Book No. 20, in the Public Record Office in London. 

The existence of the deed and its text being thus beyond dispute, it 
was sought for years to break its force by impeaching its validity in 
various ways. Among these the favorite method, for many years, was to 
allege that it was a revocable deed and that it had actually been revoked 
by other deeds from the Proprietors. To this, however, the people would 
not listen, but stoutly stood up for the integrity of their Great Deed of 
Grant and continued to set it up as a conclusive reply to the claims and 
pretensions of arbitrary rulers. It is scarcely possible, perha])s, to ap- 
preciate at this day the value of tlie Great Deed of Grant to tim people 
of North Carolina of that day in its elTect ui)on their material interests. 
Its value, however, in teaching them how eflective a safeguard a known 
written Constitution could be made against the encroachments and op- 
pressions of arbitrary rulers can be seen even at a casual glance. 

North Carolina, then from her very infancy, as it were, had been at a 
school in which the advantages of a written Constitution had been taught 
in a most impressive way and when the Revolution came it was not pos- 
sible for her to forget the lesson. \ 

In 1779 South Carolina having revolted against the Government of the 
Lords Proprietors, asked and received the protection of the crown. Tliis 
step was simply unavoidable, because having Ijeen already reduced to 
the direst straits by war with the Yamassee Indians and being in immi- 
nent danger of further hostilities from the French and Spanish as well 
as the Indians, the crown was the only power able to afford the help 
necessary to preserve her existence. And so appeal after appeal having 
been made to the confessedly j)owerless Lords Proprietors and in vain, 
South Carolina sought and found refuge in the strong arms of the King. 

North Carolina on tlie other hand neither revolted nor desired to revolt 
from the Proprietors to the crown. She was not in the straits her south- 
ern sister was and all her life an unkind royal government had been her 
northern neighbor, at one time sending ro\'al troops into her borders to 
crush out her people. And then, too, she was wise enough to know a good 



6 

thing in the way of government when she had one, and was by no means 
anxious to part with it. Her government was based upon written instru- 
ments, and even at that early day she both knew and was unwilling to 
surrender the advantage it gave her. 



Two weeks had not elapsed after Burrington, the first Royal Governor, 
met the first Provincial Assembly summoned by royal writ in North 
Carolina before the issue was squarely made between constitutional gov- 
ernment and prerogative rule, the Governor being formally notified by a 
resolution of the Assembly, duly signed by the Speaker, that by the 
royal charter given by King Charles the Second to the Lords Proprietors 
of Carolina it was granted that " the inhabitants of this Province shall 
have, possess and enjoy all Libertys, Franchises and Privileges as are 
held, possest and enjoyed in the Kingdom of England." For this decla- 
ration the Assembly was first showered with abusive epithets, then pro- 
rogued and finally dissolved by the King's Governor; and for two years 
afterward no other Assembly was allowed to meet. 

Under the first royal Governor, the contention was short though sharp, 
for his administration was a brief one. Under the second, Johnston, 
whose administration lasted near twenty years, it was long drawn out, 
but all the while the same old story, a contention between constitutional 
government and arbitrary rule. Under this administration, however, 
the general validity and the particular provisions of the Great Deed of 
Grant were oftener at issue than the provisions of Charles's Charter. 

Governor Dobbs, the third royal Governor, thought the Assembly, 
though in form representing the people, ought in substance to be only a 
piece of machinery for carrying into efi'ect the will of the King as declared 
through the Governor, but he soon found that the people and their 
Assembly did not agree with him, and in 1761, toward the close of his 
administration, after many and violent struggles with the Assembly, he 
wrote home to England that the Assembly had openly set him and the 
King's written instruction at defiance, on the express ground "that their 
charter still subsisted," that the King's instruction differed from their 
charter, and that the latter and not the former was their rule of action. 
Indeed, so highly were chartered rights valued in North Carolina that 
the people of the Cape Fear, in public meeting assembled, on 21st July, 
1774, set forth as one of the great grievances of the day, " that the char- 
ter of Massachusetts Bay was cruelly infringed." During Dobbs' admin- 
istration frequent complaint was also made of the " spirit of republican- 
ism in the Province " and of the systematic efforts on the part of the 
Assembly to engross power into their hands at the expense of the King 
and his prerogative. 

When William Tryon, the fourth of the royal Governors, and perhaps 
the ablest of them all, assumed the reins of government he found the 
country in a tumult over the passage of the Stamp Act. Diplomat by 
nature as well as a soldier by profession, he was capable of acting with 
with great prudence as well as firmness. His first Legislature he 
adjourned after a session of only a few days, nor did he permit another 
to assemble until he could announce the repeal of the obnoxious act — a 
period of near two years. But it availed nothing, for nowhere in the 
Province would the people obey the act. The pith of the Stamp Act 
trouble was the denial of the right of the British Parliament to tax the 



Province. This right of taxation, they had for years contended, could be 
hiwfully exercised under their charter only by their own Assembly. 
The right of the Assembly to control the purse of the Province, they 
asserted, was an hereditary right coming down to them from the charter 
and the exercise of which they had been born to from generation to 
generation. As early as 1716, when the Colony had l)ecn in existence 
barely fifty years, and the population all told, young and old, men and 
women, black and white was only some 8,000, when the Neuse was the 
frontier and the Cape Fear a howling wilderness, they entered upon the 
Journals of their Assembly, in so many words, the formal declaration 
"that the impressing of the inhabitants or their property under pretence 
of its being for the puldic service, without authority from the Assembly, 
was unwarrantable and a great infringement upon the lil)erty of the sub- 
ject." As late as 1700 the Assembly Ibrmally declared that it was the 
indulntal)le riglit of the Assembly to frame and model every bill whereby 
aid was granted to the khig and that every attemi)t to deprive them of 
the enjoyment thereof was an infringement of the rights and privileges 
of the Assembly. And in November, 1764, " taking into consideration 
his Excellency's speech," in which he had asserted prerogative very 
strongly, and in reply thereto the Assembly entered upon its Journal a 
peremptory order that the Treasurer should not pay out any money by 
order of the Governor and Council without the concurrence of the Assem- 
bly. Learning from his first experience the temper of the people when 
aroused, and desiring heavy appropriations. Governor Try on soon began 
to use every art of the courtier to ingratiate himself with the Assembly, 
and lie succeeded. 

His successor. Governor Martin, the fifth and last royal Governor, was 
simply a soldier of the ram-rod [)attern and of mean capacity, wlio could 
neither evade nor disobey the letter of his instructions, and the trouble 
that Tryon's diplomatic subserviency had avoided, at once broke out 
afresh, and then, too, the harvest of a century and more of seed-time was 
about ripe. Indeed, it may be said that Governor Martin's administra- 
tion was a sort of residuary legatee of the bad blood and the bad govern- 
ment of half a century. The Province was burdened with a public debt 
so disproportioned to its resources that its financial condition was well 
nigh desperate. This debt was in great part the result of Tryon's extrava- 
gance, for Tryon was a liberal expender of provincial money. A very 
large part of it, however, some £75,0;)0, ante-dated Tryon's coming to the 
Province. Without going into details, it is sufficient to say that during 
Dobb's administration the Province greatly impoverished itself by the 
repeated appropriations it made for its own defence and carrying on ex- 
peditions in conjunction with the other colonies in the seven years British 
war against the French and their Indian allies. The contributions on 
the part of North C:irolina to the common defence, in view of her scant 
resources and in the light of subsequent events, were more generous than 
wise, perhaps, and certainly out of all proportion to the contributions of 
other Provinces; but then it has never been her habit to permit scanty 
means to dwarf patriotic impulse. It may, perhaps, not be inappro- 
priate to call attention here to the fact that the regiment sent b}'' North 
Carolina under the command of Colonel James Innes, of New Han- 
over County, to Virginia, and at her urgent appeal, to meet the French 
and Indians in the year 1754, were the first troops raised by any 
British colony in America to fight outside of its own borders and at 



its own expense, in behalf of a common cause and in the general 
common defence. For this service £12,000 were cheerfully and 
promptly appropriated. And this was the beginning of a debt whose 
burden did much to break the back of Martin's administration. Ano- 
ther unhappy inheritance was the unsettled dispute between the Province 
and the Government, including the authorities in England, about the 
constitution of the Courts of Justice. The people, in substance, de- 
manded an independent judiciary, and the Governor, under orders, 
vetoed every act of the Legislature having that end in view. Still an- 
other such legacy was the persistent vetoing, also under orders, of acts 
giving resident creditors the right to attach the property of foreign debtors. 
But perhaps the most grievous of all the burdens the Martin administra- 
tion inherited was the difficulty about the currency. Of gold and silver 
the Province had none, and naturally enough, for she had neither mines 
nor mints and the balance of foreign trade was not in her favor to such 
an extent as to bring coin here from other countries. The paper money 
in the Province, Governor Tryon said, was not sufficient to pay taxes 
with. The natural remedy for this state of things, it would seem, was 
the issue of more paper money under proper limitations, by the Govern- 
ment; but in its way stood an act of the British Parliament, that the 
British merchants had had interest enough to have passed, forbidding 
the Province from issuing paper money. To this lack of a sufficient cur- 
rency to meet the wants of the Province very many troubles were directly 
traceable — notably among which was the war of the Regulation. The 
iniquity of charging excessive fees was tenfold increased by the lack of 
money to pay them. Tryon had placated the Assembly and evaded the 
difficulty by assenting to bills passed for increasing the currency and 
making liberal promises to use his influence to secure their approval in 
England. He doubtless appreciated the neceesity for such an increase 
and relying doubtless, also, upon his influence at home had the courage 
to disobey his instructions when it suited him. None of the currency 
bills became a law, however, and the trouble was left for Martin to en- 
counter. In less than four years Martin was a lugitive from the colony 
and in the place of the royal Government was one of the people, for the 
people, and set up by the people. 

It must not be supposed, however, that the people were content with 
argument alone, in the maintenance of their rights. Under tlie rule of 
the Proprietors, resort to force and violence was, it may be said, a com- 
mon occurrence, almost the habit of the country, for many years. Under 
royal rule, scarce a decade passed that did not see the people up in arms 
to redress official grievances. At a very early day they came_ to the 
opinion they subsequently expressed at Hillsboro in 1788, to-wit: that 
"the doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression 
is absurd, slavish and destructive to the good and happiness of nian- 
kind," and what is more, they acted upon it whenever occasion required. 

The first outbreak under royal rule was brought about by the attempt 
of Governor Johnston to force the people to bring their rents to the col- 
lectors at places designated by the Government. In this connection it 
must be remembered that in those days the people did not own their 
lands in fee-simple as we do now, but were tenants and held them upon 
payment of an annual rent of so much per hundred acres. Owing to the 
lack of a sufficient currency, at a very early day laws were passed mak- 



9 

ing these rents payable in produce and collectable on the premises. The 
trouble began in 173") and several years elapsed before it was ended. In 
the year 1737 the peo|)le thought forbearance had ceased to be a virtue, 
and having exhausted all peaceable means, begnn to resort to force. In 
that year, at the General Court at Edenton, a man was imprisoned for 
contempt of Court, but the people of Bertie and Edgecombe, whicii then 
covered substantially all the settled territory to the westward, hearing 
that he was imprisoned for refusing to deliver his rents at the appointed 
places, rose in arms to the number of 500 and marched on the town, 
intending to rescue the man by force from the Court, in the meantime 
cursing the King and uttering a great many rebellious speeches. When 
within live miles of ICdenton they learned the truth, and that the man 
having made his peace with the Court, had been discharged from cus- 
tody. Tlie "mob" thereupon dispersed, tlireatening, however, "the 
mt)st cruel usage to such persons as durst come to demand any rents of 
them for the future." This was the account of the affair the Governor 
himself gave, to which he added a declaration of his inability to punish 
them if they carried out their threats. The trouble did not end here 
nor for several years. 



In 174G this same Governor Johnston attempted to deprive the old 
counties of the provi: ce of their innnemorial right to send five delegates 
each to the Assembly, and issued writs of election for only two members 
to tlie county. The result was that the old counties refused to regard his 
writs of election, and when they voted each voter put on his ballot the 
names of five men alreadv agreed upon and the sheriffs so returned. 
The Legislature thereupon declared the elections void. But the people 
would vote in no other way, and in consequence the old counties for 
eight years were not represented in the Assembly, and not being repre- 
sented, refused to pay taxes or to do any other act that recognized the 
authority of the As^sembly. The new counties that sent only two mem- 
bers, seeing what the old ones were doing, said it was not fair to make 
them bear the whole burden of the Government, and they, too, refused 
to pay taxes. And this was the condition of the Province for eight years, 
at the end of which time full representation was restored. And the 
Governor was powerless to change it. 

The good Bishop Spangenburg, who passed through these counties in 
the fall of 1752, six years after the trouble began, on his way from Penn- 
sylvania to the up-country to locate lands for the Moravian settlement, 
gives a desperate account of afi'airs. Anarchy, he said, prevailed; the 
people would not acknwledge the Assembly in any way; no criminals 
could be brought to justice, though such crimes as murder and robbery 
were of frequent occurrence, for if the General Courts were opened no 
jurors would attend, and if any one was imprisoned the jail was broken 
open and the prisoner released ; and in short most matters were decided 
by blows. The County Courts, however, were held regularly, he said, 
and all matters under their jurisdiction received the customary attention. 

Doubtless the condition of affairs he found in the Albemarle country 
was a new revelation to the good Bishop as to the possibilities of life in 
America, for the people in North Carolina were not lovely to look upon 
in their ugly moods, but it is worthy of remark, that Bishop and good 



10 

man as he was, it did not for a moment shake or dehiy his purpose to 
make a great settlement for his church in the Province. 



The last trouble than began under Johnston, had not ended before a 
new one was well on the way under Dobbs. This came about from the 
setting off to Lord Granville, by metes and bounds, his one-eighth part 
of Carolina, wholh ^- North Carolina. It stretched from the Virginia 
line on the north i le par-illel of 35° 34' nortli latitude on the south. 
The southern line u . near or tlirough the old town of Bath, the present 
towns of Snow Hill and Princeton, along the southern borders of the 
counties of Chatham, Randolph, Davidson and Rowan, a little below the 
southern border of Catawba county, but not so low down as Lincolnton, 
and so on west. This was done in 1744. In a few years Granville's 
agents became great oppressors. Matters continued to go from bad to 
worse until the beginning of 1759, when the people, having, as usual, 
exhausted all peaceable remedies, again resorted to force. On the 24th 
January, 1759, a number of men, variously estimated, from Edgecombe 
country, which then included the present counties of Halifax, Nash and 
Wilson, went to the house of Colonel Francis Corbin, who was Gran- 
ville's chief agent, and lived near Edenton, seized him and carried him 
by night to Enfield, then the county-seat of Edgecombe, and obliged him 
to give a heavy bond to return at the following Spring Term of Court and 
disgorge all the fees he had unjustly taken. The Attorney-General, too, 
was unhappy, and made oath tluit he had heard that a great number of 
the "rioters" intended to petition the Court at Granville to "silence him," 
and if this was not done to " pull him by the nose and also to abuse the 
Court." During this time also, one Haywood, a subordinate of Corbin, 
who had been absent, returned home and died suddenly and was there 
buried. The people thinking the report of his death was a falsehood, 
concocted and spread abroad to prevent his prosecution in the Court, 
went to his grave in a body and dug up and inspected his remains. 
Finding the man was really dead, the people went home witliout further 
disturbance. In time a few of the "rioters" were arrested and put in 
the jail in Halifax, but on the next day tlieir comrades, having learned 
the fact, went to the jail in open day, broke down its doors and released 
the prisoners. And Governor Dobbs was utterly powerless for the vin- 
dication of the law. 



The next serious trouble grew out of the opposition to the notorious 
Stamp Act. This was an act of the British Parliament requiring every- 
thing to be stamped just as has been the case here under the Internal 
Revenue System. The stamp masters were seized and forced to swear 
they would liave nothing to do with the stamps, and it being known 
when the vessel bringing the stamps would come up to Wilmington, 
Colonels Ashe and Waddell, having called out the militia from Bruns- 
wick and the adjoining counties to the number of some 700 men, seized 
the vessel and held her until her commander promised not to permit the 
stamps to be taken from her. Try on, the new Governor, was a prisoner in 
his own house and utterly powerless. Nor was this all. The royal sloop 
Viper, then on duty in the river, having seized several vessels for want 
of stamped papers, the inhabitants of Wilmington entered into an agree- 
ment not to supply his Majesty's ships with provisions until such seizures 
were stopped; and the boatmen sent for supplies were put in jail. This 



11 

agreement was carried out until the Viper, after bein<^ entirely without 
rations for a day or two, was driven to terms and stopped her seizures. 
This was in the winter of 1765-'66. 

There was neither disguise nor concealment about all this. Every- 
thing was done in the broad open day, by men perfectly well known, 
and in the very presence of the Governor, as it w> 



The next outbreak was the war of the Regulatum, which, beginning 
in 1766, did not end until the battle on the Alamance on the 16th of 
May, 1771- The extent of this trouble will be better appreciated when 
it is known that the number of men who came into the different cami)S 
and took the required oatlis of submission after the battle amounted to 
6,40U. Including, therefore, sympathisers not sworn, and the women 
and the children, the population involved must have been at least 
40,000 ; that is to say, the great body of the people east of the moun- 
tains and west of what is now Wake county. But not even this state- 
ment gives a correct idea of the extent to which disaffection had gone. 
Governor Tryon said, as early as 1768, the insurgents throughout the 
country considered Orange as the heart of the movement, and wanted 
to see what the result there would be. Had the Regulators triumphed 
there, thousands in other parts of the Province, he said, would have 
declared for them and "civil government in most of the counties in the 
Province would have been overturned." 



Our records show indisputably that resistance to oppression was at 
the bottom of each one of these troubles, and that in no case was vio- 
lence resorted to until every peaceable expedient had been exhausted. 
These events, covering so many years and such a wide extent of terri- 
tory and coming so close together, one following directly upon the heels 
of the other, are not to be viewed as separate, casual, sporadic, isolated 
outbreaks, but as a connected series, similar in their nature, akin indeed, 
both in origin and development, like causes producing like results ; and 
a knowledge of their history is absolutely necessary to a right under- 
standing of the character of the people among whom they occurred. 
But their history, like that of events generally in the colony, shows in- 
disputably that the people of North Carolina, though upon occasion 
quite given to force and to violence, were not mere lawless rioters who 
loved strife for strife's sake and preferred violence to peaceful measures. 
On tlie contrary, there was much method in their madness and cool, de- 
liberate system in their force, to which they resorted only after argument 
had been exhausted. Each one of the troubles mentioned exemj)lifies 
this, the Rent trouble, the Legislative representation troul)le, the Gran- 
ville District troubles, or the Enfield riots, as they were called, the Stamp 
Act trouble and the war of the Regulation. Of this last it is eminently 
true that all peaceable remedies had been tried and had failed before any- 
thing like organized force was used. 



With such a record back of her, with a century of almost unbroken strug- 
gle for the maintenance of a fixed constitutional government against ar- 
bitrary government, the details of which time will not permit to be gone 
into, with every form of arbitrary government, and every phase of op- 
pression familiar to her, is it a matter of surprise that North Carolina 
scrutinized carefully and deliberately the provisions of the Constitution 



12 

of the new Supreme Government to which she was asked to l)ind herself? 
The seven years of war through which she had passed woidd have been 
little worth if she was only to exchange one tyrant for another — one op- 
pressive government for another. Her purpose had been to get rid of 
tyrany and oppression in every shape, and the only hope for this blessed 
consummation, their long struggle had tauglit her sons was in a fixed, 
knoAvn, written Constitution, that should have in itself no seeds of evil- 
Such men with such experience would naturally be slow to Innd them- 
selves to a written Constitution before giving its provisions the closest 
and most jealous scrutiny, for they knew its })ower, whether for good or 
for evil, and they would be still slower to bind themselves to one whose 
provisions were unsatisfactory to them. 

2. Was the Province ready for the Revolution f 

And now a word as to the condition of the Province when the Revolu- 
tion came. The greatest difficulty here, perhaps, is to determine when 
the Revolution did actually begin in North Carolina, for, as we have 
seen, resistance, rebellion and insurrection, more or less organized and 
of greater or less extent, were things to which she was by no me^ns un- 
accustomed. Confining the term Revolution, however, to that period of 
the resistance to British authority subsequent to the enactment of the 
Boston Harbor Bill, I proceed to give some of the facts that show how 
North Carolina felt in the premises. 

The year 1774 found North Carolina in full correspondence with the 
other Provinces through her committee of the Assembly appointed for 
the purpose. In the spring of that year Governor Martin, foreseeing con- 
cert of action among the Provinces, determined to prevent North Caro- 
lina from being represented in any Continental Congress that might be 
called. The orthodox way of appointing delegates to such bodies being 
by election by the Assembly, Governor IVIartin, having dissolved the 
existing Assembly on 30th March, thought he had the matter in his own 
hands and determined, in imitation of the course of Goveinor Tryon in 
1765 in reference to the New York Congress of that year, not to allow 
any Assembly to meet until matters were in better shape. This deter- 
mination on the part of the Governor, his private secretary, whether 
designedly or inadvertently does not appear, communicated to Colonel 
John Harvey, then Speaker of the Assembly. Harvey's reply to this 
was, "Then the people will convene one themselves." On the 3d April 
Harvey conferred with Willie Jones and on the 4th with Samuel John- 
ston and Colonel Buncombe, at the house of the latter. He was in a 
very violent mood, says Johnston in a letter written to Hooper on the 
next day, and declared he was for assembling a convention independent 
of the Governor, that he would lead the way and issue hand-bills under 
his own name, and that the committee of correspondence of the Province, 
of which he was chairman, ought to go to work at once. On the 21st 
July, 1774, a circular-letter written by direction of a General Meeting of 
the inhabitants of the District of Wilmington was sent to the several 
counties in the Province inviting them " to send deputies to attend a 
General Meeting at Johnston Court-house, on the 20th August," for the 
election of delegates to a General Congress of the Colonies, and in gener- 
al, for the consideration of ways and means to avert the evils threatening 
the American Colonies. Upon conference, however, the place of meeting 



IS 

was changed from Johnston Court-house to New-Bern and the thno from 
the 20th to the 2oth Auji;ust. Ju accordance with this plan hand-hills 
were duly issued askin<j;the people to elect (lele;fates, "with powers ohlii^'a- 
tory on the future conduct of the inhahitants," to a convention to ex- 
press their sentiments "on acts lately j)assed by the Parliament of Great 
Britain and to appoint delegates to represent the Province in a Contin- 
ental Conjj^ress." 

The elections were lield and the convention met at the time and phice 
appointed in spite of Governor Martin's proclamations. This body was 
the first purely popular representative Asseml)ly that ever met in the 
Province. It appointed three delegates to attend a General Congress to 
be held at Philadelphia, denounced the attack upon Boston, promised 
"to contribute to the extent of their ability to ease the l)urthen imposed 
ii[)on that town," to stop imports from England after 1st January, 1775, 
and provided that the Moderator should call another convention when- 
ever it bceame necessary. 

It is submitted that the above programme could not have been carried 
out in a Province that was not readv for the Revolution. 



Meanwhile during the summer and fall. Committees of Safety had 
been organized in diH'erent parts of the Province, and Committees of 
Safety in those days were by no means mere ornamental bodies. Their 
powers were practically political, legislative and judicial, for they de- 
termined not only what acts and opinions constituted a man "an enemy 
of his country," and perhaps not always with entire precision, but also 
whether the party "suspected" was guilty or innocent. And woe unto 
that man whom the conunittee declared to be an enemy to his country. 

Governor Martin, finding himself foiled in his scheme to prevent the 
Province from sending delegates to Philadelphia, issued writs for a new 
Legislature to meet in New-Bern on 8rd April, 1775. The Legislature 
did, indeed, meet there at the appointed time, but in such a frame of 
mind that on the morning of the 8th the Governor issued a proclama- 
tion dissolving it forthwith, and thus ended the last legislative body in 
North Carolina under royal rule. In less than twenty days the Governor, 
having sent his family to New York, was a fugitive, flying for his liberty, 
if not his life, to the sea-coast below Wilmington; taking refuge tirst at 
Fort Johnston and from there going aboard of the sloop of war Cruizer, 
where he remained for the few remaning weeks during which he pre- 
tended practically to any authority as Governor of North Carolina. It 
is submitted that Martin's er\forced abandonment of the government 
more than a year before the Philadelphia Declaration, is no slight testi- 
mony to the readiness of the Province to meet a revolution whose end 
was to be a final overthrow of royal government within its borders. 

On the 11th February, 1775, Harvey issued a proclamation for the 
election of delegates to another Convention, to Congress, as such bodies 
were thenceforth called, to meet at the same ime and place appointed, 
by Martin for the meeting of the Ivegislature. This proclamation was 
met by a counter proclamation from the Governor, l)ut to no effect, for 
the delegates were duly elected and the Congress met. The proceedings 
of the Continental Congress were formally approved, including the cele- 
brated Association entered into at Philadelphia on 2()th October, 1774. 
All the delegates, with a single exception, then signed the Association. 



14 

On the 20th May, 1775, the " horrid resolves " of the people of Meck- 
lenburg were put forth. In June of the same year associations were 
entered into on the Cape Fear and other sections, in which the signers 
united themselves " under every tie of religion and honor in defence of 
the country against every foe, and solemnly engaged that whenever the 
Continental or Provincial Councils should decree it necessary they would 
go forth and be ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes to secure her 
freedom and safety." Do these things look as if the Revolution had 
struck the Province unawares or unprepared ? 

It must be remembered in this connection that North Carolina had no 
special material interest in the immediate cause of the movement against 
Great Britain. The shutting up of the port of Boston manifestly would 
not injuriously affect the port of Wilmington, but on the contrary would 
in all probability increase its trade. 

It appears, therefore, that North Carolina united with Massachusetts 
and the other colonies not from any particular interest in the premises, 
but on principle, and that when she said the cause of Boston was the 
cause of all, she meant to avow her readiness to resist British oppression 
wherever it might show itself in America, and that she really meant 
what she said, the event demonstrated. The merchants of Wilmington 
dispatched one of their own vessels with provisions and supplies, without 
even freight charges, to the relief of the people of Boston who had come 
to much suffering because of the loss of their trade. Nor was Wilming- 
ton the only point in North Carolina from which relief was sent to Bos- 
ton. The little scrap of paper I hold in my hand tells its own story. 
Though yellow with the dust and stains of more than a hundred years, 
it speaks trumpet-tongued of the generous patriotism of North Caro- 
lina in that day. It reads as follows : 

ADVERTISEMENT. 

New-Bern, January 27, 1775. 

Public Notice is hereby given, that Mr. John Green, and Mr. John 
Wright Stanly, Merchants in New-Bern, have agreed with, and are ap- 
pointed by, the Committee of Craven County, to receive the subscriptions 
which is now or may hereafter be raised in the said County, for the relief 
of the distressed inhabitants of Boston and to ship the same to the port 
of Salem as soon as the several subscriptions are received. 

Proper stores are provided by the said gentlemen for the recejDtion of 
Corn, Pease, Pork and such articles as the subscribers may choose to pay 
their subscriptions in. 

Those gentlemen, therefore, who have taken in subscriptions either in 
money or effects are desired to direct the same to be paid or delivered 
to the above-named Mess. Green and Stanly on or before the middle of 
March next ; and to send as soon as possible an account of the subscrip- 
tions which are or may be taken by which they may be governed in 
receiving. 

R. COGDELL, Chairman. 

But suppose it had been the port of Wilmington instead of the port 
of Boston that had been closed, would Massachusetts have rung with 
the cry that the cause of Carolina is the cause of all ? Certainly it did 



15 

not look so about the time of the notorious Hartford Convention, and 
possibly at other times since. 

On the 20th August, 1775, the third Congress of the Province met at 
Hillsboro, at the call of Samuel Johnston, Col. Harvey having recently 
died, and a wiser body of men perhaps never assembled together in this 
or any other Province. The Congress was in session just 20 days, and 
in that time measures were perfected for raising troops, including the 
appointment of their officers, and for raising money. To know exactly 
their strength a census was ordered to be taken. Looking forward to a 
long war, with blockaded ports, liberal bounties were offered for the 
production at homo, not merely of the munitions of war, but of the 
manufactures necessary to home-life. How far they Avent in this direc- 
tion will be seen from the following hst of bounties they offered: 

For every hundred weiglitof salti)etre £ 25 

For lirst five hundred weight gunpowder 200 

For first rolling and slitting mill for preparing iron to 

make nails 250 

For first fifty pairs cotton cards 50 

For first one hundred pairs woollen cards 50 

For first twenty-five dozen pins 50 

For first 25,000 needles 50 

For first steel furnace 100 

For first paper mill 250 

For first twenty-five yards best linen 50 

For first best woollen cloth 100 

For first salt works on the sea shore 750 

For first furnace for pig iron and hollow iron 500 

The troops raised by the Congress consisted of two regiments of Reg- 
ulars and five battalions of Minute-men, one for each of the districts 
into which the State was divided, each battalion consisting of ten com- 
panies of fitV men each. In addition to this the militia was put on a 
war footing as far as possible. 

Not only was every function of government exercised by the Congress; 
but then and there it proceeded to provide for the future by the erec- 
tion of what in this day would be called a jM'ovisionnl government, 
with ample powers and a full complement of ofiicers. In its action in 
this regard the Congress evidently had in mind the action of the British 
Parliament in supplanting King James with the Prince of Orange. 
The Parliament, in order to make a vacancy for William to fill, declared 
that James had "abdicated" the throne, when in truth there was noth- 
ing further from his intention than that. The Congress at Hillsl)oro 
said there was a "Silence of the Legislative Powers of Government," 
and ascribed it "to his P^xcellency the Governor refusing to exercise the 
Functions of his Office by leaving the Province and retiring on Board a 
man-of-war, without any Threats or Violence to compel him to such a 
measure." The impudence of this is simply sublime. Governor Mar- 
tin was at the time actually in the Province. He had left New-Bern, the 
seat of government, under circumstances that, to say the least, made 
his departure expedient. The "horrid resolves" of Mecklenburg had 
been publisiied to the world. He had been denounced as an inciter of 
slaves to rebellion against their masters, as an enemy of America in 
general and of North Carolina in particular, and, indeed, almost as hostis 



16 

humani genervi. Colonel Ashe, with a regiment of Cape Fear men at 
iiis back, liad forced him literally "to take water" and go aboard the 
Oruizer; and finally his proclamation, denouncing both the election of 
the delegates and the meeting of the Congress, had, by order of the 
Congress, been burned by the common hangman. And this is what the 
Congress called refusing to exercise the functions of his office and leav- 
ing the Province ! A "silence of the legislative powers" of government 
being thus ascertained, the Congress proceeded to break it with clank 
of sabers, with the rattle of musketr}^ and roar of canncjn, with horse, 
foot and dragoons, and for seven years tiiey kept up the racket. To 
i<ay nothing of its unblushing untruth, notiiing can equal tlie impu- 
dence of this performance — perhaps it would be more becoming to say 
the grim humor of it — save to shower a man witli cologne and then to 
liang him for smelling sweet ! Sending Caswell and Maurice Moore, 
however, to tell the Regulators they were not bound by their oaths of 
submission was almost as good. 

And yet, though we hear much about the talk at Mecklenburg in May, 
we hear little or nothing al)out the action at Hillsboro in August. It 
must be remembered, too, that the Congress at Hillsboro was composed 
of delegates fresh from the people, with credentials not thirty days old ; 
that no one was taken by surprise, but, on the contrary, that everybody 
knew, to use Governor Martin's own words, "that the assembling a con- 
vention at Hillsboro would bring the affairs of the country to a crisis," 
while at Mecklenburg the people were excited beyond control by the 
unexpected arrival of a courier with the news of the affair at Concord. 
At Mecklenburg, in May, the people of a county talked independence; 
at Hillsboro, in August, the people of the whole Province deliberately 
and resolutely acted it. And yet there be men who do not credit the 
talk at Mecklenburg. But reasoning backward from Hillsboro to Meck- 
lenburg, what is there to be surprised at in Mecklenburg ? 

The measures for the raising of troops were executed with such dis- 
patch tliat in less than sixty days after the adjournment of the Congress 
Colonel Howe, with the first regiment of Regulars, was near Norfolk, in 
Virginia, defending that State against the British, under Lord Dumnore. 
How well our brethren over the northern line appreciated his services 
will appear from the following resolution, unanimously adopted on 22d 
December, 1775, by the Virginia Convention, then in session at Williams- 
burg, to-wit: 

" Resolved unanimously, That the thanks of this Convention are justly 
due to the brave officers, gentleman volunteers and soldiers of North 
Carolina, as well as our brethren of that Province in general, for their 
prompt and generous aid in defence of our common rights against the 
enemies of Ameriai and of the British Constitution ; and tliat the Presi- 
dent be desired to transmit a copy of this resolution to Colonel Howe." 

Nor was this all. At the same time that we were taking care of our- 
selves and sending a regiment of Regulars to help the Virginians, we 
sent Colonels Martin, Polk and Rutherford, with near 1,000 men of other 
troops to South Carohna to put down a rising of Tories there that was 
too strong for our Southern neighbors to manage. It will be seen from 
the above that North Carolina was the first to send troops beyond her 
borders for the common defence against tlie British, just as twenty years 
before she had been the first to send them beyond her own borders for 
the common defence against the French and Indians. And by a singular 
coincidence in both instances she sent troops to Virginia. All this was 



17 

six full months before tlie Philadelphia Declaration of Independence. 
Does it not look as if North Carolina was ready for revolution, or war, or 
something? The Continental Congress evidently thought so, for John 
Penn, one of our delegates there, wrote to '-General Thomas Person, under 
date of 14th February, 1776, saying : I h;i ', e the pleasure to assure you 
that our Province stands high in the opinion of Congress. The readiness 
with which you marched to Virginia and South Carolina hath done you 
great credit." 



Entertaining the opinion about the Regulators that I have entertained 
from my first knowledge of events, I may be pardoned for leaving my 
immediate subject long enough at this point to call attention to the fiict 
that the Congress at Hillsboro, on the very first day of its session, form- 
ally and, with a great big capital R, 

Resolved, That the late Insurgents [meaning the Regulators !] and 
every of them, ought to be protected from every Attempt to punish them 
by any means whatsoever, and that this Congress will, to their utmost, 
protect them from anv Injury to their Persons or Property which may 
be attempted on the Pretence of punishing the said late Insurrection, or 
anything in consequence thereof. 

It was also 

Resolred, That Mr. Maurice Moore, Mr. Caswell, Mr. Thomas Person, 
Mr. William Kennon, Mr. Knox, Mr. Locke, the Rev. Mr. Patillo, Mr. 
Bourk, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Benjamin Harvey, Mr. Thomas Jones, Mr. Penn 
and Mr. George Moore be a conmiittee to confer with such of the Inhab- 
itants of this Province who entertain any religious or political scruples 
with Respect to associating in the common cause of America, to remove 
any ill Impressions that have been made upon them by the artful De- 
vices of the Enemies of America, and to induce them by Argument and 
Persuasion, heartily to unite with us for the Protection of tlu^ Constitu- 
ional Rights and Privileges thereof. 

But what a vast amount of cheek, to use the expressive slang of the 
day, it must have required for Maurice Aroore and Caswell and Patillo 
to attempt to persuade the Regulators that the oaths they had been 
forced to take at the point of the bayonet after the battle of Alamance 
were not binding on their consciences ! Patillo was one of the Presbyte- 
rian divines who in 17G8 united in a pastoral letter to the people of 
their faith denouncing t'.^e Regulators as criminals; Caswell's bayc .tts 
had forced the oaths down their throats, and Moore had declared twelve 
of the Regulators, when on trial before him for being in the battle, to 
be guilty of treason and had sentenced them to be hung, and six of 
thoni were hung. 



On the 27th of February, 1776, was fought the battle of Moore's Creek 
Bridge. This battle was the culmination of the very brilliant campaign 
of near a month's duration under Col. James Moore, of the Second 
Regiment of Regulars, that brought to such a sudden termination the 
well-digested and formidal)le plan for the invasion and subjugation of 
North Carolina under the auspices of General Clinton and Governor Mar- 
tin. The troops that took part in the campaign were drawn from above 
Greensboro to the westward and from below New-Bern to the east, points 
some 200 miles apart. There were mounted men, infantry and artillery 
engaged in the campaign. The first order issued bore date the 3d Feb- 



18 

ruary, and the campaign closed victoriously on the 27th. The imme- 
diate field of operations was from Fayetteville to Moore's Creek Bridge, 
some 60 miles up and down the Cape Fear. The troops actually en- 
gaged in the battle numbered about 1,000 men. The enemy were vari- 
ously reported as being from 1,500 to 3,000 in number. "Fifteen hun- 
dred rifles, all of them excellent pieces ; 350 guns and shot bags ; 150 
swords and dirks ; 2 medicine chests immediately from England, one 
valued at £300 sterling; 13 wagons with complete sets of horses; a box 
of Johannes and English guineas amounting to £15,000 sterling, and 
850 common soldiers were among the trophies of the field.'' 

Bancroft says that "in less than a fortnight more than 9,400 men of 
North Carolina rose against the enemy, and the coming of Clinton in- 
spired no terror. * * * >K Virginia offered assistance, and 
South Carolina would gladly have contributed relief; but North Carolina 
had men enough of her own to crush the insurrection and guard 
against invasion ; and as they marched in triumph tln-ough their piney 
forests they were persuaded that in their own woods they could win an 
easy victory over British Regulars. The terrors of a fate like that of 
Norfolk could not dismay the patriots of Wilmington ; the people spoke 
more and more of independence; and the Provincial Congress at its 
impending session was expected to give an authoritative form to the 
prevailing desire." 

And all this was done in a country without a railroad, wthout a 
steam-boat, without a telegraph, and even without mails, and that, too, 
with as little excitement and confusion and with as much promptness 
and ease as if war had been our normal condition. There was not a 
hitch or a break in any combination or arrangement that was made, 
but everything went like clock-work. It is wonderful to think of, 
scarcely credible to us of the present day, who have seen something of 
war and the difficulties in the way of successful combination, even with 
modern facilities and under the most favorable circumstances. And 
this was done full four months before the Philadelphia Declaration. Is 
not the testimony it bears conclusive ? 

Later in the same year we sent Colonel Rutherford, with over 2,000 
men, against the "Over-hill" Cherokee Indians. He crossed the Blue 
Ridge at Swannanoa Gap, went down the French Broad to War Ford, 
where he crossed it, then up Hominy Creek, then across Pigeon to the 
Tuckaseege, and thence across the Cowee Mountain to the Tennessee 
River. He destroyed thirty-six towns, destroyed even their growing 
crops and drove off' their cattle. 

During the first months of the year 1776 the Continental Congress was 
almost at a standstill, unwilling, indeed, to recede, yet seemingly re- 
luctant to go forward and take the final plunge. Talk about lil)erty and 
freedom was plenty enough, but when it came to the irrevocable act of 
separation and the measures necessary to accomplish it the Continental 
Congress, very naturally, perhaps, dallied and dawdled and hesitated. 
Delegates, too, differed, or said they differed, as to the next step ; some 
contending that a declaration of independence ought to come first, others 
that foreign alliances ought first to be made. The advocates of the lat- 
ter course said that while it was easy enough to declare independence it 
would be very difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish it by their own 



19 

unaided efforts. The question of forming foreii:;n alliances became a 
burnintf one; to make them was palpable treason ; not to make them 
was failure. The next stej) uncpiestionably would put in jeopardy cer- 
tainly their fortunes and possibly their "sacred " lives as well. 

At this juncture the matter was brought to the attention of the people 
in North Carolina. 

On the 14th February, Mr. Penn, one of the delegates to the Conti- 
nental Congress, wrote to Thomas Person, a member of the Provincial 
Congress, saying: "Matters are drawing to a crisis. They seem deter- 
mined to persevere and are forming alliances against us. Must we not 
do something of the like nature? Can we hope to carry on a war with- 
out having trade or connuerce somewhere? Can we ever pay any taxes 
without it? Will not our paper money depreciate if we go on emitting? 
These are serious tilings, and require your consideration. The conse- 
quence of making alliances is, perhaps, a total separation with Britain, 
and without something of that sort we may not be able to procure what 
is necessary for our defence. * * * If you find it necessary that the 
Convention should meet sooner than May let us know of it, as I wish to 
return at that time." 

On the 3d March the Provincial Council, Thomas Person being one of 
its members, ordered the next session of the Congress to be held at 
Halifax on the 2d April. On Thursday, the 4th, the Provincial dele- 
gates met. On the evening of Sunday, 7th April, the Philadelphia 
delegates reached Halifax. On Monday, the 8th, Messrs. Cornelius 
Plarnett, Allen Jones, Thomas Burke, Abner Nash, John Kinchen, 
Thomas Person and Thomas Jones Avere appointed a special committee 
to take into consideration "the usurpations and violences attempted and 
committed by the King and Parliament of Britain against America, and 
the further measures to be taken for frustrating the same and for the 
better defence of the Province." The committee was an exceptionally 
strong one, every member of it having a notable record, unless it be Mr. 
Kinchen, of Orange, about whom not much is now known, save that he 
was a lawyer and lived in Hillsboro. The f;ict, however, that he was 
put upon that committee is strong proof that he was a strong man, for 
it was a committee upon which there was no room for mere figure-heads. 
On Friday morning, the 12th, the committee reported as follows: 

" It appears to your committee that pursuant to the plan concerted by 
the British Ministry for subjugating America, the King and Parliament 
of Great Britain have usurped a ])ower over the persons and projierties 
of the jieople unlimited and uncontrolled, and disregarding their humble 
petitions for peace, liberty and safety, have made divers legislative acts 
denouncing war, famine and every species of calamity against the con- 
tinent in general. The British fleets and armies have been and are still 
daily employed in dcstroyingtlie i)eople and committing the most horrid 
devastations on the country. The Governors in different colonies have 
declared protection to slaves who should imbrue their hands into the 
blood of their masters. That the shijjs belonging to America are declared 
pri/.es of war and many of them have l)een violently seized and con- 
fiscated. In consequence of all which multitudes of the people have 
been destroyed or from easy circumstances reduced to the most lament- 
able distress. 

" And whereas the moderation hitherto manifested by the United 
Colonies and their sincere desire to be reconciled to the mother country 



20 

on constitutional principles have procured no mitigation of the aforesaid 
wrongs and usurpations, and no hopes remain of obtaining redress by 
those means alone which have been hitherto used, your committee are 
of opinion that the House should enter into the following resolve, to- wit: 

" Resolved, That the delegates for this Colony in the Continental Con- 
gress be empowered to concur with the delegates of the other Colonies in 
declaring Independency, and forming foreign alliances, reserving to this 
Colony the sole and exclusive right of forming a Constitution and Laws 
for this Colony and of appointing delegates from time to time (under the 
direction of a general representation thereof) to meet the delegates of the 
other Colonies for such purposes as shall be hereafter pointed out." 

And tliereupon, as the Journal of Congress states, the resolution was 
unanimously adopted. 

This was the first authorative, explicit declaration, by more than a 
month, by any Colony in favor of full, final separation from Britain and 
the first like expression on the vexed question of forming foreign alli- 
ances. It is in commemoration of this fact that our State flag bears 
upon its field the legend, " 12th April, 1776." 

North Carolina, already an independent sovereignty under a govern- 
ment of her own creation, was more solicitous about continuing the 
separation between herself and the motlier country than about any order 
of precedence in the ways and means leading thereto. In order however 
that there might be no doubt in the premises, her Congress covered the 
whole ground by declaring not merely for independence, but in a plain, 
manly way for the only means in sight of making it good. 

Does not all this look as if North Carolina was ready for the Revolu- 
tion, ready to do whatever the exigency of the occasion demanded — 
ready to do anything, in fact, save to abandon the cause ? Need any 
further testimony be cited ? 



And here, perhaps, I might close this address. To do so, however, 
without some reference to some of tlie men who were leaders in those 
days would, to me, at least, be very unsatisftictory. Especially is this 
true as to four men whose careers, though they came to an end before 
the Revolution began, yet unquestionabl}'- led up to it. Each was a 
marked man in his day and generation, and no two of them played 
precisely the same role. Together they covered three-quarters of the 
last century. Their iiames were, and I give them in point of time, Ed- 
ward Mosely, John Starkey, Hugh Waddell and John Harvey. 

COLONEL EDWARD MOSELEY. 

Of the nativity, parentage and early life of Edward Mosely scarcely 
anything whatever is known with certainty. Doubtless, however, he 
was a native of Virginia, and almost certainly he received his education, 
and a good one it was, in his youth ; and doubtless, also, he came to 
North Carolina in early life. 

His first appearance upon the records that have come down to us is 
as a member of the Council in the year 1705. He was then a house- 
holder, and the Council met at his house. How long he had been a 
member of the Council does not appear, this being the first record of 
that body that has come down to us. From that time to the day of his 
death he was continuously in the public service, in some high office or 
employment. 



21 

In 1708 he was elected to the Assembly of that year, chosen to decide 
between the claims of Gary and Glover to the Governorship, and was 
made Speaker of that body. From that time until 1784, wlien he became 
a member of the Council by royal appointment, and as such a member 
of the Upper House of the Legislature, he was almost constantly a mem- 
ber of the Assembly or Lower House, and when a member invariably its 
Speaker. He was also Surveyor General of the Colony, and for near 
twenty years one of the Commissioners in behalf of North Carolina in her 
famous controversy with Virginia about their boundary line. He was 
also one of the commissioners that ran the line between North and South 
Carolina, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and Associate Justice and Chief 
Justice of the General Court of the Province. Meanwhile, he was also 
the foremost lawyer in the Province, an active member of the vestry in 
his Parish and ever a friend of learning. The list of books he gave to 
found a Provincial Library in Edenton is still extant. He was also one 
of the Commissioners that ran the line between Lord Granville's posses- 
sions and the King's domain in the Province. His last public service 
was as a member of the commission to revise the laws of the Province. 
He died on the 11th July 1749. 

As has been well said of him* : " Of all the men who watched and 
guarded the tottering footsteps of our infant State, there was not one who, 
in intellectual ability, in solid and polite learning, in scholarly cultiva- 
tion and refinement, in courage and endurance, in high Christian mor- 
ality, in generous consideration for the welfare of others, in all the true 
merit, in fine, which makes a man among men, could equal Edward 
Moseley." 

And yet it is to no one of these qualities, nor to all of them, that the 
great debt of gratitude North Carolina will ever owe to him is due, but 
to his undying love of free govergment, and his indomitable mainten- 
ance of the rights of the people. Doubtless no man ever more fully 
realized than he that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, nor was 
there ever upon any watch-tower a more faithful sentinel than he. And 
to him, above all others, should North Carolina erect her first statue, for 
to him, a])ove all others, is she indebted for stimulating and keeping 
alive that love of liberty regulated by law, and that hatred of arl)itrary 
government that has so long characterized her people. 

In him, arbitrary and oppressive government ever found a bold, 
prompt and effective opponent. Not a mere brawling demagogue, by 
any means, but a true patriot who knew the rights of the people, who 
knew how to assert them and feared not to do it. Happily for our State, 
he came to the front in the formative period of her existence, and, so far 
as her records show, did more than any man ever within her borders to 
give shape and direction to the character of her people. It was under 
his lead that the Assembly, in 1716, in a formal resolve, told the Gov- 
ernor and his Council, "that the impressing of the inhabitants or their 
property under pretence of its being for the public service, without au- 
thority from the Assembly, was unwarrantable, and a great infringement 
of the liberty of the subject." The man who, at that early day, in the 
wild woods of America, could formulate that resolve, and the people 
whose Assembly could tling it in the face of the government, were worthy 
of each other. 



*A study in Colonial History. Hon. George Davis. 



22 

And surely it is no mean tribute to the character of a man so beloved by 
the people, that upon all important occasions, when honesty, ability, and 
courage were specially required to further the interests of the Province, 
the Government, also, called his services into requisition. 

The name of Moseley will never be without honor in North Carolina 
so long as time and gratitude shall live. 

COLONEL JOHN STARKEY. 

Among the many men who contributed to the discomfort of Governor 
Dobbs during his stay in North Carolina, Colonel John Starkey, of On- 
slow county, was one of the most conspicuous, for he was both a public 
treasurer and an avowed republican. He was a man of good fortune and 
integrity, and was very much liked and esteemed by the people. He 
was executor of most people who died near him, having won public con- 
fidence " by his capacity and diligence, and in some measure from his 
garb and seeming humility, by wearing shoe-strings, a plain coat, and 
having a bald head." But, in spite of all this. Governor Dobbs said he 
was the most designing man in the Province ; that he was a " professed, 
violent republican, in every instance taking from his Majesty's preroga- 
tive and encroaching upon the rights of the Council and adding to the 
power of the Assembly to make himself popular"; that getting into the 
Assembly, he " continued to make himself popular by opposing all taxes 
that did not turn out to his profit, and by attempting to gain power to 
the Assembly at the expense of his Majesty's rights," and that finally he 
made himself strong enough to induce the Legislature to appoint him 
one of the treasurers of the Province without any limitation as to term 
of oflice, a circumstance that greatly increased his power, which he hesit- 
ated not to use against the Crown. Being treasurer, he had charge of the 
payment of the allowances to the members for their attendance, which 
he could advance or delay, as to him seemed best, so that all unstable, 
impecunious members who wanted a supply " followed him like chic- 
kens," and he swayed the House against the most sensible members of 
it. As an instance of the control Colonel Starkey wielded, Governor 
Dobbs said it was through his influence that the Assembly refused to 
give a proper salary to a storekeeper at Fort Johnston, though recom- 
mended to them by his Majesty in Council because they did not have the 
selection of the man. For this and other contumaciou'* acts the Gover- 
nor took from him his commission both as magistrate and as Colonel of 
Militia. 

The above is the portraiture by Governor Dobbs of a man whom our 
records show the people of North Carolina long held in the highest honor; 
not, indeed, because of the humility of his garb, for other men who were 
not so singular in their dress were also honored and loved, but because 
of his sterling qualities, both of head and heart. That he was guilty of 
avowed republicanism many years before republicanism ceased to be 
considered a crime there seems no reason to doubt, and thus confessedly 
guilty, he was honored and confided in by the people, is beyond ques- 
tion; and this doubtless was the head and front of his offending. And 
just here the question arises, if the people of North Carolina thus openly 
and persistently honored and rewarded, for the treasurer's place was the 
most lucrative in their gift, an avowed republican, how far were they too 



23 

tainted with republicanism? All that we can say is that for near thirty 
years he represented the county of Onslow in the Assembly ; from the 
year 1739, for near thirty years, with this known character, he was one 
of the foremost men in the State and honored as only the best men of 
his generation were honored. Whatever they may have thought of his 
principles, for the sturdy old republican himself the people evidently 
had a great liking. 

There is more in Governor Dobb's comment on Colonel Starkey's dress 
than appears at the first glance. If Colonel Starkey played the dema- 
gogue by having a bald head and using plain coats and shoe-strings, it 
is apparent that the custom of the country for men in liis station in life 
was to dress differently. When he said Colonel Starkey had a bald 
head, Governor Dobbs, being an Irishman, doubtless meant that he wore 
his own hair ; that is to say, that he did not wear one of the big wigs in 
style in that day. So, too, if wearing a plain coat and using shoe-strings 
distinguished him for humility in the class to which he belonged, then 
lace coats and shoe-buckles were the prevailing wear of those not so 
distinguished. And so in this incidental way we get information, not 
merely as to the personal habits of one of the most noted men 
in his day and generation in the Province, but also as to the modes of 
dress that obtained amongst our ancestors and the extent to which the 
more pretentious styles were worn. 

GENERAL HUGH WADDELL. 

In 1754 appears for the first time on our records a name that soon 
became as familiar as a household word in the Province — the name of 
Hugh Waddell. In that year he was sent as a Lieutenant in Colonel 
Innes's Regiment to Virginia, and there made a Captain. In 1755 he 
was sent with a company to tlie North Carolina frontiers and built Fort 
Dobbs, of which he retained the command for several years. In 1756, 
as Commissioner from North Carolina in conjunction with Peyton Ran- 
dolph and William Byrd, Commissioners from Virginia, he negotiated 
treaties with the Cherokees and Catawbas. He was then barely twenty- 
one years old. In 1758, having been promoted to be Major, he went to 
Virginia with three companies and took part in the expedition against 
Fort Duquesne under General Forbes. In this expedition he distin- 
guished himself very much, not merely for great personal courage, but 
for great skill as an Indian fighter as well. In the spring of 1759 he 
was promoted to be a Colonel and again given charge of the frontiers, 
with power to call out the militia of Orange, Rowan and Anson, that is 
to say, the entire middle and western portions of the Province, whenever 
occasion might require. Later in the same year he conmianded the North 
Carolina contingent of troops in the expedition against the Cherokees 
under Governor Lvttclton, of South Carolina. In February, 1760, he 
was again at Fort Dobbs and present at the Indian attack on that place. 
That he took no part in the expedition under Colonel Montgomery 
against the Cherokees in June of that year was doubtless due to the fact 
that Governor Dobbs having refused to accept the a]ii)ropriation offered 
him by the Assemby no provision was made for raising troops in time 
for it. Before the summer passed, however, the emergency became so 
great as to swallow up every other consideration, and an ample appro- 



24 

priation having been offered and accepted, Colonel Waddell was given 
four independent companies, in addition to the frontier militia mider 
his command, for the protection of the settlers. In 1761 he commanded 
the North Carolina contingent of the troops in the campaign in which 
the power of the Cherokees was finally broken and peace restored to the 
frontiers. In 1765, in conjunction with Colonel John Ashe, he raised 
the militia of the Cape Fear, seized the vessels bringing in the stamps, 
and forcibly prevented their distribution. In 1771, as General com- 
manding the troops raised in the west, he took part in the campaign 
against the Regulators. On the 9th April, 1773, he died at Castle Haynes 
in his 39th year. 

General Waddell was born in Lisbon, County Down, Ireland. His 
parents were Hugh Waddell and Isabella Brown. His father, like Dobbs, 
and like Rowan, was a member of a well established family in the north 
of Ireland, but on account of the fatal result of a duel in which he was 
engaged he spent several years in Boston, Massachusetts, with his young 
son. He then returned to Ireland and not long afterward died. He was 
a friend, according to tradition, both of President Rowan and Governor 
Dobbs. The attraction for young Waddell in North Carolina was doubt- 
less the opening for military service the Province presented at the time of 
his coming over, which seems to have been in the early part of the year 
1754, an attraction that was heightened by family interest with both the 
acting Governor Rowan and the expected Governor Dobbs. He was then 
not twenty years old. In this connection it must be remembered that 
for some time North Carolina was the only Province that went to the 
help of Virginia against the French and Indians. 

General Waddell was evidently a born soldier and, though so young, 
doubtless trained and disciplined, though there is nothing to show where 
he got his training, if any he had, before serving under Colonel Innes. 
But whether trained or not, wherever firing was to be heard there young 
Waddell was shure to be, and certainly as an Indian fighter he was with- 
out an equal in the Province. Physically he was a powerful man, of 
large stature, having not only unusual length of limb but great breadth 
of chest, activity, strength and endurance in a rare degree. He was, too, 
a man of no ordinary mental calibre, fertile in resources and quick and 
ready in making use of them. Many traditions remain showing the per- 
sonal character of the man. 

For seven years, covering all the Indian troubles, he lived and fought 
on the frontiers and was the leader and commander, facile princeps, in 
meeting every danger, so that the country and the people were alike fa- 
miliar to him. And that the people were accustomed so long to fight 
under him, that they loved him and had confidence in him, explains 
why it was that ten years nearly after he ceased to live among them he 
was able to raise troops there so easily when sent by Tryon to rouse the 
country for the campaign against the Regulators. He had been "through 
the war " with the frontiersmen, as we would say in this day, a seven 
years' war, it must be remembered, sharing all their dangers and all their 
hardships, and his hold upon their affections and upon their con- 
fidence could not be broken. But civil affairs received his attention as 
well as military. In 1757 he took his seat as a member of the Assembly 
for the county of Rowan, the county in which Fort Dobbs was situated 
and in which he lived. In 1762, after peace was made with the Indians, 



25 

he married, and having removed to the low country, represented the 
county of Bladen. He married Mary Haynes, daughter of Captain 
Roger Haynes, of the well-known " Castle Haynes," near Rocky Point, 
on Cape Fear River, and granddaughter of Rev. Richard Marsden, first 
Rector of St. James's Parish in the county of New Hanover. 

An earnest patriot, with war the passion of his life, and possessing 
reputation, experience and capacity. General Waddell's career in the 
Revolution, had he lived and retained his health, would douhtless have ' 
been a great one. But he was cut off in the prime of life and just when 
his country most needed his services. But how well North Carolina must 
have been grounded in the faith to have shown no check in her course 
when Hugh Waddell, b.er greatest military leader, and John Harvey, her 
acknowledged civil leader, went to untimely graves at the very outset of 
the great struggle, and just when they were so much needed. 

COLONEL JOHN HARVEY. 

The Harvey's were amongst the first comers to the Albemarle section. 
They went there from Virginia, where they had been settled for many 
years. Possessing wealth and education as well as vigorous mental pow- 
ers, they occupied a very prominent position in the Province for more 
than a century. John Harvey, the great leader in the eventful times 
immediately preceding the Revolution, is the only member of the family, 
however, with whom we have now to do. He was a native of the Albe- 
marle Shore, and a citizen of the county of Perquimans. Endowed by 
nature with a vigorous mind, and having embraced the most liberal op- 
portunities for its cultivation, he added the ornaments of education to 
those more indispensable and hereditary qualifications of a polished gen- 
tleman, which eminently distinguished his character. After having for 
many years served as a member of the Assembly from Perquimans, he 
was, in 17()G, elected Speaker of the popular House, a station which he 
filled, with but one interruption, to the close of the Royal government. 
Througliout the turbulent period of the years 1767, 1768, and 1769, he 
presided over the deliberations of the House, and received the unani- 
mous thanks of that body at the close of each session. The arts and 
influence of Tryon in the course of time paralyzed the Whig party ; and 
in the Assembly of 1770, Harvey was succeeded by Richard Caswell, a 
gentleman more acceptable to Tryon, as a personal and political friend. 
In the Assembly of 1773, however, he was again elected Speaker at the 
instance of Caswell, and he found the office once more of the greatest dig- 
nity and importance. The House, from this period to the flight of Gover- 
nor Martin (and the consequent dissolution of the Royal government) was, 
strictly speaking, arrayed as a party against the government; and, dur- 
ing the whole of this time Mr. Harvey was the acknowledged leader of 
the opposition. He conducted the Whigs through the great controversy 
on the court law, and the attachment clause, and the various other dis- 
putes with the Executive and Council. He was chosen Moderator of the 
first Independent Provincial Congress, a station which he filled with 
great honor to himself, and advantage to the cause of his country, until 
his death, which took place in the early part of the summer of 1775, 

[Note.— For the sketches of Moseley, Starkey and Waddell, see Colonials Records of North Caro. 
Una, and for that of Harvey see Jones's Defence of the Revolutionary History of North Carolina,"] 



26 

while yet in middle life. He was remarkable for great decision of char- 
acter and firmness in his political principles, and demeaned himself to- 
wards his opponents, and more particularly the Governor, with a haughty 
reserve, which showed the bitterness of his opposition. Harvey's Neck, 
a point of land on Albemarle Sound, at the mouth of the Perquimans 
River, was the seat of this remarkable and illustrious family, which, for 
many years before the Revolution, was celebrated for its dignity, antiqui- 
ty and wealth. The changes of a century have left nothing but a few 
venerable and respected tombs, to attest the magnificient hospitality and 
grandeur of the " House of Harvey." 

A word more and I have done. 

When I search these North Carolina scriptures and read the story of 
her hundred years' struggle with the mother country for Constitutional 
Government and the no less wonderful story of her hundred years' strug- 
gle with the savage Indian for very life, both culminating in her first 
great revolution; and then coming down to her second great revolution, 
when I remember how the old State bared her bosom to that great storm, 
the greatest perhaps, of modern time, if not of all time ; how she sent her 
sons to the field, until both the cradle and the grave were robbed of their 
just rights; how devotedly those sons stood before shot and shell and 
the deadly bullet, so that their bones whiten every battle-field ; when I 
remember how heroically she endured every privation, until starvation 
was at her very doors and until raiment was as scarce as food ; with what 
fortitude she met defeat, when, after Appomattox, all seemed lost, save 
honor; especially, when I remember how, in the darkest of all hours, 
rallying once more to the struggle for Constitutional Government, she 
enlisted for the war of Reconstruction, fought it out to the end, finally 
wresting glorious victory from the very jaws of disastrous defeat ; when 
I look around me and see the thousands and thousands of bright, vigor- 
ous, intelligent, ambitious youth, children of my old comrades, ready, 
aye, and eager to do everything for their State that honor demands, I 
bow my head in gratitude and say as our great Confederate commander, 
the immortal Lee, said, when, looking at his grand old army and seeing 
how many of the brave legions that had fought under him so long were 
from our State, he exclaimed in the fullness of his heart, 

" GoD BLESS OLD NORTH CAROLINA." 



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